The Heart of Darkness
by GothicReaper
Summary: AU/ While Garrus mourns the death of the human Spectre who had claimed his heart, Lazarus Station is raided by Collectors. With their most influental opponent gone and the races struggling for unity, the Reapers launch their attack. When Shepard finally wakes and finds that her life is not her own anymore, she realizes that there are fates worse than dying. Much worse.
1. Chapter: Awakening to a dying world

**AN:** okay, I probably listened "Ghost Assassin" one time too many but the youtube vid totally inspired me to this shorty. Any similarities are of course purely coincidentally, Sarah K. is all awesome on her own *wink*.

Enjoy!

* * *

"Hey Commander, can you unplug me?  
Just for a minute, I need some privacy."  
Headset off and stretch her neck out  
Down the rocks to her head's safe house

Yeah I remember it all  
Bleed and shout out my calls  
The air was so dusty  
Her armor getting rusty  
She found thoughts she never had  
Her young ones were just as bad  
She winced out her weapon

I don't want to know what she did  
She is not who I am  
At least that's what I thought  
Now I'm second guessing  
I can't put my gun down  
My suit's getting heavy  
Something wants to be released  
Something dark inside me

_Maduk ft. Veela - Ghost Assassin_

* * *

**Chapter 1 ~ Awakening to a dying world**

Dreams.

It was the first kind of _anything_ that returned to her as she floated in a state of bodiless tranquility. There in the depths of her own mind she could dream about the peace of sleeping in his arms. The light he had brought to her heart at a time where she believed that there was nothing but shadows.

Time was difficult in this place but at one point there had started to be voices. Muffled and low but still voices. She sometimes thought they were even talking to her. And then there was warmth. And pain, but it was distant. It didn't matter. She still had the dreams that sheltered her.

This feeling that had uncoiled in her when she kissed him and his hands had run down her bare back. When she pulled him in and he had softly growled her name, betraying such a tenderness hiding underneath all his hot fierceness… Could it be? Could this exhilarating madness that made her trust him beyond any conditions be… love?

She was still picking at the strange thought when the voices suddenly turned loud. Then scared. Frantic. The calm broke apart but she couldn't wake! She tried to lift her arms but didn't know how. Voices turned into screams. Flashes of light sparked behind her eyes. Movement. The warmth vanished and was replaced by ice. Harsh guttural sounds erupted all around her; spiking fear like needles in her.

That was when the pain came. Pain like she had never felt before, not even…

Not even when she died.

Her head. Her back. Her hands. The agony pushed into every cell, ate at every nerve ending. Like a fire scorching away her very being. And eventually it even shattered her dreams; ripped them away from her, replacing them with hellish nightmares and something so dark and horrible it made her wanting to shriek out her soul.

Only… She had no tongue to scream in this place.

Bit by bit she felt how her sanity broke apart, how her mind failed to withstand the pressure that slowly grinded her to dust.

And then the darkness consumed her.

* * *

~V~

* * *

The head lying on his chest stirred and those curious human hairs tickled his skin.

Lazily Garrus trailed his hand along the gentle curve of her waist and hip, all down to her thighs. She sighed softly, flexing the leg that still rested on his abdomen in what he thought a quite… inspiring way.

He chuckled softly. Who would have thought human bodies could be so intriguing. This evening had certainly taken a turn Garrus would have never believed to happen outside those private little fantasies stored away for sleepless nights. And yet… there she was; lying naked and sweaty in the turian's arms, her fingers following the hard outlines of his skin plates.

Her blocky teeth nipped playfully at his chest and he couldn't stop the small growl from forming in his throat. Perhaps they would all die on Ilos tomorrow.

He couldn't care less.

She lifted her head, and Garrus brushed aside the loose strands of sun-colored hair. Green eyes deep enough to swallow him and his soul forever watched him and then Shepard gave the turian one of her rare smiles; cordial angel and wicked demon all rolled up into one mischievous grin.

"You still think you can keep up with me, huh?"

Garrus tightened the hold he had on her body and rolled her onto her back. He licked the side of her neck, savoring the taste of her skin. Then he winked at her.

"A challenge, Shepard? Terrific."

Gunfire over shouts intruded on his sleep and for a few moments Garrus struggled to keep the dream from vanishing, to hold on the _feel_ of her just a little while longer but… But aside from the turian, the cot within the small dark tent was empty.

_As is had been for three spirit-forsaken years. _

Three years and he still couldn't forget. Neither the taste of her skin nor the sound of her voice. Let alone the feel of her lips or the…

He groaned and grabbed for his Mantis. The loud booms of Menae's last remaining GARDIAN shook the air. The Reapers were getting bolder by the day. He was still in his armor and quickly crawled out of the tent and into the hell that had taken to dictate the lives of simply _every_one.

* * *

~V~

* * *

_WAKE._

She woke into a murky yellow light, her vision too blurred to make out anything. The feel of being trapped surged in her mind. She lifted her hands and met resistance. Walls. There was a slick wall all around her. And her vision… It wasn't off, she was swimming in some liquid. She was in a tank of some sort! Her fingertips burned as if someone had pulled out the nails with pincers but she kept searching for a handle, a rift, anything to open her prison. Nothing. She pounded with her fists against the barrier. She tried to shout but something was blocking her throat!

In panic she lashed out with her biotics. The walls burst open and she dropped forward in a gush of liquid, her limps too weak to stop her fall. Now it was tears that blurred her sight and she ripped at the mask covering her mouth. Tubes! There were tubes attached to it! Coughing and gagging, she pulled out three long tubes that had been stuck in her throat. She retched but nothing happened. Her body... it was hurting everywhere. With a shudder she curled up on the wet cold ground and squeezed her eyes shut. Her memory was too fuzzy to have any idea about where she was. Or who she was. And yet there was something inside her that was afraid about what she would find if she looked around. Eventually she lifted her head looking back over her shoulder.

At an alien elongated structure, looking like a huge amber colored egg that had merged with brown and black tubes and tech. Not a tank. A cocoon of some sort. Next to the one she had broken free off where others. Smaller ones; _growing_ along the wall of a hall of some sort as far into each direction as she could look in the dim light.

_Not the Normandy that's for sure…_

_Nor… what?_

Before her mind could puzzle together another piece of information, she heard a soft shuffling sound. Her head whipped around. There in shadows perhaps twenty paces away from her, eyes reflected the light in a bluish glow.

As her vision adjusted to the dark she could make out more of the creatures, human shaped but twisted by tech beyond any recognition. One of them cocked its head as if listening and somehow her mind could place a name upon it.

Husk.

Everywhere husks.

She scrambled to feet but something was wrong with her balance and she stumbled backwards. There she caught herself against the broken shell of the cocoon.

Biomass merged with tech. Not any tech.

Reaper tech.

Her thoughts raced. The husks were still watching her, some of them crouching down like hounds awaiting the command to kill.

Suddenly a ripple went through them and something pushed its way towards her. It was a being she had never seen before, a bulky chitineous body topped with a triangular insect-like head with four glowing eyes.

Frozen in shook she stared at the creature. Not because it was a myth coming to live. Not because its race had sparked the painful memory of a ship torn apart. And not because it bowed its oversized head to her. She stared because she could _feel_ the creature in her mind.

All of them.

Her head spun and she lifted her hands to rub her temples. Instead of nails her fingers ended in claws. She frowned at them, despite the strong feeling that they were _supposed_ to be here. Her eyes wandered further up her arms. It was too dark to make out details but great parts of her skin seemed to have been etched away to show metallic implants underneath. The image of a tall grey skinned male turian with similar implants flickered but she couldn't understand its meaning. She twisted her arm a bit. There. Merged into her right upper arm was a piece of armor with a letter and number.

This one she _did_ remember.

The vessel, that once had been Shepard, screamed.


	2. Chapter: The root of all regret

**Chapter 2 ~ The root of all regret**

With a hoarse curse, Garrus slashed his combat knife through the throat of the lean creature that had once been a turian woman. Black blood gushed and he forced himself to watch how the mad light faded from her eyes. He looked up and at burning world. His home. The thick columns of smoke wound around the planet's atmosphere like snakes choking their prey. Black tiny specks floated in the haze, each a Reaper who could kill not dozens but hundreds if not thousands in one go. Occasionally explosions flashed. He hadn't received word from his family for weeks now but he couldn't afford to dwell on the implications. So he simply kept staring at the ruins of his people. This was why they fought. This was why the Reapers_ must_ be stopped. Yet with each passing day it was getting harder and harder not to lose faith in the face of the sheer endless numbers the Reapers threw at them. The protheans had resisted for years. As it was, this cycle would be done in another six months.

_If we only had more time…_

He shook his head and cleaned the blade as best as he could on a piece of cloth that was already soaked with black stains. Time wouldn't change that not even with all their lives at stake the Citadel races had been able to get over their petty squabbles and agree on uniting against a common enemy. The Council had refused to see reason after Ilos and when the Reapers started to pour in through the relay in the Bahak system it was too late.

Garrus sheathed the knife and scanned the camp. The attack had come in the hour before dawn but the enforcement that had arrived in the previous evening from outpost Teatrus had left them with enough troops to break the assault. Nevertheless it had been a tight run; they had managed to overrun the eastern barricade. Still, if Garrus hadn't given the order to abandon Teatrus, they would have surely lost both posts. Garrus hadn't expected to be in command any time soon but with Corinthus and his high-ranked officers dead… Well, in a war like this a soldier might raise high within the course of one single day.

One of his officers waved his hand. It was Talid, one of his Comm Specialists and his second-in-command now. He must have returned from Menae's command center late in the night but the fighting had kept Garrus from catching up with him so far. Garrus nodded, then picked up his empty Phaeston rifle and jogged over, but not before snatching up a few clips from the armory.

"What's the status, Talid?"

"No casualties, Sir, but Arenya and two infantry soldiers from Teatrus are injured severely. Averius… He says they won't last through the night."

Garrus suppressed the need to curse. He was in command now, his soldiers _needed_ to see that he was calm and in control of regardless what happened. Still, the loss of Arenya would weaken their defenses considerably and everybody knew it. She was the strongest of the three cabals he had left and their biotics had saved the outpost on more than one occasion.

"Have we received word from any of the other systems?"

Comm Officer Talid shifted his feet. Then he said, "Thessia and Sur'Kesh have fallen."

Rubbing his temples, Garrus released a long breath. "I see." _More banshees. Bloody hell. _"There aren't any good news for a change, are they?"

"High Command had decided to pull back the rest of their remaining fleet before the system was overrun. Dalatrass Linron wasn't so reasonable. I don't think we will ever see any salarian troops again."

"Damn it! These are your good news?"

"No, but that the asari agreed to support the other battlefronts is."

Garrus snorted. "Typical. Now that there's nowhere else for them to go they're willing to talk. Do you know if Palaven requested troops?"

"They did indeed, but I fear most of their units will be sent to this classified project lead by Doctor T'Soni." The Comm Officer lowered his voice. "Do you think the rumor is true? That they can build a weapon to end this war?"

"I don't know, Talid. But I know that Dr. T'Soni wouldn't be so committed if she doesn't believe that it will work…"

It wasn't the truth. Deep down in his heart Garrus knew that this was a war they had already lost three years ago. Still, his words seemed to straighten the Comm Officer's posture a bit and that was the only thing that counted.

"Actually, there is more: this human paramilitary, Cerberus, yes? They finally came around and decided to pitch in their resources as well."

Garrus frowned. He didn't trust Cerberus. He had seen their facilities and what they were capable of. Unfortunately, it also had given him a good idea how insanely deep their pockets had to be and terrorists or not, at this point he even would have gladly put up with a bunch of krogans, acting in a manner appropriate to people who had embraced the very spirit of a brawling and pirating horde. And Cerberus was definitely one of the few who still _had_ any resources to spare for the Project.

Perhaps a year before all this insanity started, they had approached him. Garrus had just arrived on Omega when one of their agents had suddenly knocked on the door of his hotel room. Offering him a _job_ of all things. The woman would have certainly been pretty by human standards if not for the large burn scar that was marring the greater part of her face. She had given her best to be persuasive, talking about abducted human colonies and ominous threats to the galaxy. For a moment he had actually been tempted to take the job, but then something about her had put him off. Not the fact that she was standing there with a wound that couldn't be older than just a few weeks tops, but the dull emptiness in her eyes. The one that came after the desperation of reaching the end of your rope. Despite her brave words, she didn't believe in the success of her own mission and he knew better than to hire on a ship that was not only burning but also already sinking. There was one and just one person he would have followed into a losing game like this, and he would not dishonor her sacrifice just to walk into his certain death.

The image of the last time he had seen her flickered in his mind and he pushed it back into the abyss. Later.

"I wonder what has happened to Agent Lawson and her mission," Garrus mumbled to himself.

After the agent had left him, he felt that he needed to get away from anything human for a while. He texted a guy named Sidonis, whose life he had saved the other day that they had to postpone drinks and took the next ship bound to Palaven.

"What was that, Sir?"

"Nothing."

In the distance a Harvester screeched and Garrus quickly scanned the sky. There. He saw the beast to the north and it was quickly approaching his outpost.

_Damn, I definitely could use a good old krogan horde now._

"Watch the skies! Harvester inbound!" Garrus shouted.

From the south three fighters approached engaging the Harvester. Together their weapons tore through the abominations thick skin and it fell from the sky shrieking. The fighters veered back and suddenly a second Harvester lifted up into the sky behind them. The beast had waylaid them. It crashed into the last of the fighters, causing the small aircraft to fishtail. The other fighters turned to provide fire cover, yet before the hit pilot could regain control the now wounded Harvester attacked again, clawing into the engine. The fighter exploded, taking the Harvester with him; two fires blooming in the sky.

He closed his eyes. This time he couldn't keep the memory from forcing its way into his mind.

Fire was blooming in the sky as bit by bit the Normandy exploded. He had tried to grab for her hand but the shock wave of another explosion had pushed her away before he could reach her. For a few seconds his brain simply refused to process what was happening and then someone pulled him back and the door's automatic lock down had kicked in.

"NO!" Garrus yelled, his fists pounding against the air lock with no avail. But was unable to do anything. He could only watch. Watch how the woman, who had just some minutes ago stole a kiss from him in the aisle leading towards the CIC, fell through fire and debris towards Alchera's frozen surface.

The image of her body rapidly vanishing from his sight would forever be burned into his mind.

But the worst? The worst was that Garrus never had the chance to tell her how much he loved her…

* * *

~V~

* * *

The woman that had once been Shepard sat on the ground hugging her knees, and stared out of the observation point located at the top of the strange station. In front of her a sheer endless field of debris swirled around a black disk, slowly drawn in to be destroyed beyond any retrieval. It was the only place where she could found a resemblance of peace, while lost in the vast infinity of the black hole's all consuming nothingness.

How long since she had woken here? Weeks? Months? The blank in her mind were memories should have been made next to impossible to judge the passing of time. That nothing ever changed in the routines on this space station wasn't helping either. The Collectors just existed; they did not _live_. They had no art, no culture, nothing that would indicate even traces of a sentient being. Like insects they just bustled about, forever caught in their instinct-driven, clock-like routines. The sheer monotony would have driven her up the walls - if she only would have been able to recall that it bothered her in the first place.

Her scarred hand brushed up her bare arm. At least she thought of it as bare – even though the greater part of her actual skin was gone now. She flexed her fingers. Small pointed plates, made of some dull, anthracite colored metal, pushed through the gray, faintly purplish skin covering her knuckles. If she made a fist, the half an inch long triangles would make a formidable brass knuckles substitute. The same metal had been used to enforce other parts of her skeleton; sometimes running invisible under her flesh, sometimes breaking through her skin, either to form a protective ridge, as the one covering her spine or to become a weapon like the one inch long, slightly sickle-shaped tips that protruded from the nailbed of her fingers.

Absently, she clicked with the claws of her left hand over the strange piece of armor attached to her upper arm. Something about it… But she couldn't remember either. It was as if a _pressure_ prevented her from going there and the more she pushed the more painful the pressure grew…

She dropped the thought. Someone… Yes someone was approaching her location. She shifted her legs but kept sitting, the implants that had seamlessly merged with her flesh and skin glowing a barely visible blue in the dark of the unlit room. Thinking… thinking was difficult with all those creatures crowding her mind.

_Is this how the rachni queen feels?_

For a second the shredded images of a snow covered peek hovered in her mind. Of fighting a blue skinned alien and embracing another blue skinned alien that was crying. Like a kaleidoscope rotated about, the images fell apart and the question vanished once more without being answered.

The presence she had felt before closed in, accompanied by the soft click-click of insect-like limbs hitting the ground. The large Collector came to a halt next to her and the veil that had shrouded its mind vanished.

This one was different than the rest of the Collectors. Not just in shape and size but also for its thoughts. They were precise, rational; and not merely a random dump of urges or incoherent flashes like the others. There was an alien but surprisingly sharp, even sophisticated brain dwelling behind those uncaring compound eyes. These days… she often found herself clinging to the small piece of sanity Harbinger's presence provided in the storm of chaos that raged in her mind.

She untangled her legs and got up, then rested a hand on its large insectoid head. Physical contact somehow made it less weird to establish a connection with the Collector.

_SOON. _

The electrodes below her scalp tingled as she picked up Harbinger's thought. She clenched her jaws and suppressed the initial urge to claw into her matted hair and pull out the cables that would enhance the signal.

_OUR ARMIES WILL ARRIVE SOON. BE READY._

She nodded and left the Collector behind to seek a pack of drones to hone her hand-to-hand combat skills. She might not fully understand Harbinger's reasons for war but she understood the need to fight.

Quickly, she made her way towards the heart of the station, ignoring the forms that floated in yellow, egg-shaped cocoons. Not long ago those aliens had tried to destroy her home. Smiling she remembered licking her lips and tasting the stray drops of blood belonging to the dark-haired human woman with the large sad eyes and the scarred face. It had been a pleasure to rip out the woman's heart and watch the life vanish from her eyes, while the torrent of red claimed her once white suit.

All of a sudden, a tiny stab twisted her heart. Even while she had gloried in releasing her rage at the intruders, she couldn't deny that there had been something else. Buried deep down she had felt a profound wrongness at her actions, an awful and horrible sadness.

Regret.

Pain.

Loss.

Fire. She remembered that there had been fire.

And suddenly the memory of a low throaty voice hovered on the edge of her mind. A warm shiver run down her back as it whispered a name.

_Shepard._

Her name.


	3. Chapter: The last link

**Chapter 3 ~ The last link severed  
**

Husks.

She positively hated those husks.

There was something so profoundly _wrong_ about them, it made her feel like sickening up whenever her awareness stumbled upon them.

They weren't animated corpses by strict definition, for their creation inevitably needed a living host, but she suspected that somewhere along the horrible transformation process they all _did_ die, leaving behind nothing but a pile of flesh forced into functioning by tech. An empty shell.

Where the Collectors at least had their incoherent jumble of thoughts – which at times even showed a most disturbing complexity despite their primitiveness – the mind of a husk contained nothing. If she touched them… it was as if a black hole would spring up in her mind. Not a nothingness you would maybe expect from a, say, inanimate object, but an emptiness created by the complete and palpable absence of something that used to be there. As if she could feel the absence of life itself in them…

But Harbinger needed more husks and she, she would bring them to him.

Besides, it was her first chance to get off the station so she jumped straight at it like a starved man at a heel of old bread. She didn't care where he was sending her. She only cared that this trip would disrupt her days' monotony which was caging her like mind in a never-ending nightmare.

Arms crossed before her body, she stood on the bridge of the Collector's biggest battleship. The armor she had donned a few hours back glistened in the lights of the ships' control unit like the multi-hue blackish carapace of a beetle. And just like a carapace the armor fit her like a second skin, hugging her body. She hadn't been able to penetrate the slightly elastic but durable material with one of her knives and was all that counted. It even made her ignore the two inch high and curved metal spikes that ran along the outsides of her forearms and calves, like the serrated crest of a dragon.

Two guns were sitting snugly in their holsters strapped to each thigh, but of lately she had troubles remembering them. Using them felt… strange somehow. More distanced. Killing with them seemed less real; lacking the unique feel of the very essence of life draining from the dying into her – and with the husks in her head she needed every reminder to convince herself that she was still alive.

Impassively, she glanced at the drone that sat in the pilot seat before her, enabled with just enough intelligence to receive Harbingers' orders and operate the controls. For a moment she struggled against the almost overpowering need to draw one of her twin combat knives sheathed on the small of her back and drive it into the vulnerable spot where the insectoids' spine connected with its skull. She shook her head, dwarfing the surging blood lust. Too long. It had been too long since she had been able to sink her blades into an enemy.

She tore her thoughts away from the drone and dropped into the copilots' seat, adjusting the large monitor before her to bring up the view outside.

They flew through a veil of debris that shrouded the space station. Not just any debris but pieces of broken vessels and tech; a mass grave for countless ship wrecks, forever caught in the black holes gravitation and deemed to rotate slowly into oblivion. Some of them seemed ancient, the last remnants of civilizations that were gone for so long that no one even remembered their names. Others were new, though. Very new.

On the monitor a big part of a large, sleek hull drifted lost through the vacuum of space. She frowned at it and a weird feeling of familiarity reached out and...

_Mandy. What a ridiculous name for a ship, indeed, _she thought dismissively and shied away from the tiny bit of memory that had threatened to rise from its abyss.

If she had learned one thing then that there was nothing but pain waiting at the end of this.

* * *

_Screw that goddamn sun._

She retreated from the open airlock, and squeezed her watering eyes shut. After so much time spent in the dark of space, the suns' merciless glare stabbed straight into her skull. With an angry growl, she forced her lids to open and jumped down the ten feet drop before the gangway had even started to unfold.

With a low thud, she landed on the soft, short clipped grass in a crouch, her head darting around to assess the perimeter. A ring of two-storied container-like buildings framed the plaza, Harbinger's pilot drone had selected for the landing. Or better, it would have been a ring, if the landing hadn't destroyed the nearest buildings behind them. The ship was big and the plaza was not.

Above her the warm sun shone down from a blue cloudless summer sky. Her eyes started to water again and her nostrils tickled. Absently she brushed away the tear with the back of her hand, giving the metal scraping against her skin no more than a stray thought.

_Must be the blasted light, _she thought wryly, while watching another seeker swarm taking off into the colony.

Not far ahead she suddenly heard panicked shouts and gunfire. She stretched out her awareness, feeling the presence of a dozen drones ahead. With a tiny evil grin she straightened and started to jog towards them. The scouts were already making an impression. She wouldn't want to miss the show.

With a small shudder she sensed Harbinger taking control of a drone. She looked back and saw him leading a platoon of thirty Collectors in the direction the seeker swarm had taken. At the ship, another platoon started to unload the cocoons for transporting the captured humans. They would fan out after the vanguard, picking up the paralyzed humans. Something in her stomach revolted at the notion but she had already fallen into an easy run, she would be able to maintain for hours, her thoughts painfully focused on the fights ahead.

She felt for the direction her scouts had taken and set out to turn right at the next intersection in the maze of buildings. She rounded the corner. So far she hadn't encountered any humans and… she skittered to a halt. To her left another row of those uniform beige containers stretched, yet the one she now stood before featured a big window front, metalized to keep out the sun. In its reflection stood a monster.

Sleek and long limbed it was roughly human in shape, with a multi-shaded, dark violet carapace-like armor covering most of its slender body. The suit bore slight resemblance to a Collector drone, defining jutting ribs and muscle cords that gave the grotesque impression of looking at a body that had just been skinned. Pointed crests and sharp edges protruded from its arms and legs, most attached to the armor. But a few others, she knew, were growing straight out from the very bone. Just like the thick, five inch long spike that protruded from the back of the forearm and ran along the outstretched arm, protecting the elbow.

Brownish hair that she somehow knew used to be blonde hung down to the shoulders in a tangle of thick felted strands, sheltering a frightening amount of wires grown into the scalp.

But the worst, the worst was the face the hair framed.

It used to be human but no human's skin was of this grayish, somewhat purple paleness. The lips were too dark, as if the blood that gave them their color had turned from red to some dark goo. There… was no iris. Only huge black pupils that stared back at her so impassive and soulless, like gateways to a hell a hundred times worse than the most horrible nightmares her mind could have ever devised. A long ragged scar was running from the hairline above the right eye, over the bridge of the nose, down to the left jaw line.

She stepped closer, clawed fingers turning the head sideward and exposing the neck. She pulled down the neckline of the suit. Spreading out from below the collarbones was a mass of black veins, branching upwards until they seemed to cup the face with their thin tendrils. Scattered through the tangle and glittering innocently in the sunlight were the telling metallic inclusions of Reaper made tech. Horrified she let go of the hem.

_Saren… His name was Saren… _

With a guttural howl she slammed her biotically charged fists against the window, shattering the mirror image. Her head spun and she dug her fingers into her temples. Frantically she gulped. All of a sudden her throat seemed too tight to let in any air.

That was when she heard the noise. The click of a safety coming off. She swirled around, unsheathing the twin knives in one fluid and inhumanly fast motion, dropping into a fighting stance. Biotic energy was licking her hands and forearms, tiny bolts of blue lightning even dancing up the blades.

A soldier wearing an armor bearing a familiar emblem had exited the next building, a gun in his hands. He was a handsome one, lean muscular built that spoke of endurance and speed rather than brute force, short black hair, and serious brown eyes. And then _something_ happened. Eyes wide, his expression turned from surprise into shock. The pistol in the soldier's hand trembled and his lips moved silently to mouth a single word.

Those awfully serious brown eyes… They had always seemed to hold a silent, barely subdued pain in them. In another life, she had believed she could be the remedy for that pain, that she could bring back the joy to those eyes but…

She groaned and retreated one step, a flash of images stabbing her brain behind her eyes, pushing through the block that lay upon her memory. Images of a younger version of this man, his face covered in mud, crawling next to her through an obstacle course. Of sneaking away from the compound to get a tattoo. Of kissing those soft lips and spending one night in passion. Of many more nights spent with angry arguments and bringing each other misery. Of…

She clawed her way out of the catatonia. It all had happened within seconds. The soldier was still staring at her in disbelief when suddenly a group of five colonists, armed with assault rifles and shotguns, emerged from the building behind him.

"God help us all..." one man said, horror twisting his face. "What is this thing?"

"It's…" the soldier, whose name she still couldn't recall, begun softly. "It's something that isn't supposed to exist…"

Recognition, sadness, pain. She saw it all playing across his features. And then determination overruled it all.

"Kill it."

No more than a whisper, those two words, coming from a man who once claimed to love her, cut so deeply into her soul, they severed the last remaining link to her humanity. He pulled the trigger and she screamed.

Not in hurt but in sheer outrage.

A barrier flashed in place, catching his bullet. Then another. And another. The colonists started shooting and she scattered them with a biotic blast. The man who had spoken before went down writhing, his skin eaten away by the destructive energies.

She yanked at the invisible chains that tied the Collectors' minds to hers, drawing them to her location. The soldier tried to hit her with his own biotics but she deflected the sphere with a flick of her wrist. He wanted to kill her? He would die trying!

The first drone dropped from the sky and fell to the shotgun of a red haired woman. Two more approached and then the woman was screaming and clutching her stomach, trying frantically to hold on to her innards that wanted to escape through the hole one of the Collectors had ripped into her abdomen.

She stepped towards the soldier, her mind mad with her own rage and the jumbled thoughts and impressions of the half a dozen Collectors that had come to fight nearby. He never backed up. Not even when her first knife pushed through the weak point that connected the breast plate with the shoulder.

And not even when the second slid into his throat.

She pushed him against the wall to keep him from falling. Pain had conquered his beautiful face once more and she leaned in, touching his cheek with her fingers; watching solemnly how the life drained out of his eyes. Too late she felt the hard metal pressing against her abdomen. He closed his eyes and then the shot came.

Agony flared, spreading out from her middle into her whole body. Her knees gave way and she let go of the soldier. He slipped down the wall. Tumbling she fell. The pain was trying to shut down her body, yet she dug her fingers into the soft soil of the lawn, trying to push herself forward, although she didn't even know where she was supposed to go. He limbs went numb and her face hit the soft grass. It smelled of summer rain. Summer. She had loved summer, hadn't she?

_Help me…_

She couldn't tell how long she was lying in the puddle of her own blood, her body shaken by cramps. Somehow it simply refused to went into a hemorrhagic shock and let her die. Suddenly she felt movement and the agony in her stomach erupted to a new height. She groaned, too weak to scream. Someone was carrying her away. She struggled against the weight of her lids and saw the triangular head of a Collector towering above her.

_I TOLD YOU SO…_ Harbinger suddenly said in her mind. _THEY ARE VERMIN. KILL THEM BEFORE THEY KILL YOU.._.

She didn't bother with arguing. The comforting sensation of his presence finally lured her body into relaxation, taking away the pressure. Before her mind slipped into unconsciousness though, a tiny question rose from the back of her head.

_What am I? _

There was no answer.

_Damn you! Answer me! _

Silence. And then he said,

_YOU ARE THE FUTURE._

Blissful darkness engulfed her.


	4. Chapter: The Edge of the World

**Chapter 4 ~ The Edge of the World**

"Knock, knock. May I come in?"

She looked up from her desk facing the wall next to the door; her stern expression melting to make way for a hesitant smile, the light color of her skin in stark contrast to the dark Alliance sweats she was wearing. Then she narrowed her eyes.

"You're not going to argue with me, are you? There's only so much bullshit I'm willing to take this night."

Still standing in the doorframe, Garrus hived a sigh. He had passed Alenko on his way through the Mess Hall and the human Sentinel had looked even grimmer than usual.

"That bad, huh?" He asked, and the golden-haired Spectre motioned him to come in.

"Yep. And then some," Shepard replied as he sat down on one of the crates containing the quarian's loot that had been pushed against the wall of the already cramped cabin. She turned in her chair frowning at something unseen, then shook her head. "Never mind. If we're lucky all our petty issues will be gone by tomorrow anyway. So… what can I do for you?"

He hesitated. Tali had actually wanted to come with him and invite Shepard over for a game of cards with Liara, but then the quarian hadn't been in the Engineering.

_That ship's a shoebox._

Maybe he hadn't been looking too hard for the quarian.

"Yeah, well … since we likely just have one last evening to enjoy all our petty issues… I thought you might want some company while dwelling on the precious memory of life's most magnificent moments."

She chuckled. "Oh boy. You'd think that air shaft damaged me one some fundamental level."

"Okay, here's the deal: Let's never do that again."

"Deal."

They sat in silence for another moment watching each other. Then he said, "Ah, if you're interested, there's also a game of Skyllian Five up ahead. Maybe…"

She blinked and for the fraction of a moment, a hopeful light flashed and died in her eyes, leaving her utterly lost. As abrupt as they had come, the Commander shook off the deep thoughts that had occupied her mind and the corners of her lips twitched into a smile. All of a sudden there seemed to be not enough air in there for him.

"Well, Vakarian… I don't know about you but I can think of something better to spend my last night..."

She still wore this beautiful smile when his claw-tipped fingers gently followed an invisible trail from her cheek down to her collarbone and it only deepened when he curled his arms around her exhausted and naked body, listening to the soft beat of her heart, vowing without any words that he would never let her down…

"Garrus? Garrus, are you still there?"

The slightly panicked pitch in Liara's voice was audible even through the faint static noise of the radio and he jerked his focus back.

"Yeah. Sorry. There's not much sleep to be caught of lately," Garrus said, dragging his fingers across his face. He was tired. So damn tired.

Around him the crumbling ruins of what had once been the central communication room of Menae' main post lay as shattered as their hope. There had no one been left alive when he arrived with the sorry rest of his platoon. Those that hadn't been killed by the Reapers had raised their weapons against themselves. It was that or being caught alive and Turned to be sent against your own kind. Such was the reality of this war. Only it wasn't really a war.

_We are like weeds, mowed down by the scythe._

Did the scythe feel sorry for the weeds? Hardly.

"I… understand," the asari said, sounding no less exhausted.

"Liara… Please tell me you have something… Anything."

"I don't know… I thought I had it all figured out but something… something is missing, Garrus. The crucible won't work as it is, I know it! I feel like I'm _this_ close to the solution but I just can't see it!"

Her voice broke. He felt like sobbing as well. The silence stretched. It was alright, though. They could sit and share their misery as long as they needed. Wasn't as if any military brass would come along and claim the bandwidth. In utter certainty of their victory, the Reapers hadn't even bothered with attacking the comm buoys and there simply weren't enough people, let alone first priority clients, left to choke the bandwidth even if they hooked up each and every radio they could salvage.

"Tuchanka?" He finally asked.

"Gone…" Her voice was no more than a faint whisper and he felt a cold shiver.

He wanted to howl. He wanted to rage. But he simply couldn't summon the energy for those things any more. "I went to the Primarch. I went to his officers. I _begged_ them, Liara, to get carriers to Tuchanka. They wouldn't listen…"

But then no one had, or things wouldn't have keeled over that badly. They all had failed. The Citadel Council, the Citadel races, together with any idiot who had a say in those matters.

"Goddess… This is a nightmare."

"No," he said bitterly. "It's worse. From a nightmare you can wake…"

"I wished Shepard was here…"

He closed his eyes, struggling away from the painful memories before they could overwhelm him once more. "Yeah. Me too."

Silence. Then, "Do you remember Alliance Fleet Admiral Hackett?"

"Yes."

"He ordered the resources the humans have left to the Project. All of it. Maybe… Maybe there is still a chance…" she stopped. She wasn't believing any longer. These were their final days and she knew it from the bottom of her heart. He didn't resent it her. He had stopped believing a long time ago. There would never be a machine that magically made things right again. Such simply wasn't the design of this world.

For a few more minutes they dwelled on the rather joyful moments of the journey they had started out together with the Normandy crew and then they bid their farewells, perfectly knowing that they would not see or hear each other again. Not in this life.

Garrus picked his way through the rubble of concrete and pieces of broken down ceiling out of the carcass of the building.

Outside Talid waited with what was left of his platoon. They had believed they could withdraw to Menae's main post. Another battle lost. Another piece of hope crushed. But they would endure. Because that was what it meant to be turian. They won't turn back. Their lines won't break.

Talid nodded to him and pointed at a short range transistor radio, salvaged from a damaged truck.

"Sir, I received a transmission. It's outpost Rakasha. They're holding so far but…" he lowered his voice. "They've seen the last supply ship weeks ago."

Supplies. They were harder and harder to come by these days.

"Tell the men to gather what they can salvage from here. Then we head for Rakasha."

"There's more. My scouts returned. Something odd's cooking four leagues to the east. Might be a Reaper, and likely a form we haven't encountered so far… I have not much. They didn't want to draw too close."

"Your scouts did well. We will stay low and skirt it. Whatever it is." For now.

Talid saluted and took off to the gathered soldiers to relay the orders.

Feeling utterly empty, Garrus stared, across the barren surface, towards the horizon of Palaven's barren moon. This wasn't a battlefield. It was a tomb. They were already dead and their bodies just refused to accept.

* * *

~V~

* * *

Gone.

She didn't know how long she had floated in the cocoon, covered in soothing fluids again, but the wound that had ruptured her stomach was gone.

So was Harbinger.

Not the slightest trace of his strangely analytic intelligence was left in the minds of the drones. It was as if he had never been there in the first place. But he had been, hadn't he?

Weeks passed with her roaming restless through the Collector station waiting for Harbinger's presence to return. Weeks in which she desperately tried to understand, tried to rip the secret of what was happening from the mind of those strange insect-like creatures, yet there was just ever the same flood of crude images and primitive thoughts. Feed. Mate. Fight. Sometimes though… sometimes she thought she saw glimpses of strangely familiar images. Flashes of blood. Hatred. War. And that overwhelming sense of dread. Something had happened, something so horrible and cruel that it had became part of some crude collective memory all Collectors shared. And yet she knew. This recognition didn't stem merely from picking up their thoughts. It felt… older. Significant. Before.

And with that the dreams returned. Hazy scenes, mixing with those disturbing Collector images that left her feeling lost and confused. Sometimes the soldier with the sad hazel eyes would invade her dreams. From those she woke crying and didn't know why. After all he had tried to kill her, hadn't he? So why did killing him feel so painfully wrong? And then there would be those that made her wake up screaming, even though she could never remember much. But there was always this voice; whispering to her through the dark of night, whispering words in a language she did not know and yet had once understood. She could almost _feel_ those words, how the low throaty timbre vibrated through her, filling her with warmth. And in this brief moment she knew: it was something from Before, something that was waiting on the other side of the barrier she never tried to pierce, something… No. She shied away. Nothing was waiting there. Nothing but pain and sorrow and darkness. And as if to prove her the warmth fled to be replaced by the cold emptiness of the space station; the voice swallowed by the distorted screams echoing through countless Collector generations brought down to her by their shared memory. She would wake, howling in anguish, the pain of millennia mixing with the own loss she felt so keenly but could neither explain nor understand. Desperately she lashed out for the comforting presence of Harbinger but of course he was not there and might never return. Had he saved her life only to abandon her? Didn't he know that she needed him?

Weeks blurred into Months.

When it wasn't flooded with adrenaline, her body ached, the countless implants stinging like open wounds. When she wasn't killing, she felt like dying herself. So whenever a ship would leave for another raid, she went with them, hunting those humans who would never hesitate for a second to put a bullet between her eyes. Her wrath was endless.

It was the only real emotion she had left.

And then it happened. One day, hovering next to the space station, there suddenly was this huge black ship that didn't look like at ship at all, and a familiar voice was filling her mind, creating a weird jumble of hatred and joy:

_IT IS TIME._

* * *

~V~

* * *

Talid fell. His eyes suddenly so open as the Comm Officer turned to him in shock. And then so empty. So painfully empty.

_May the Spirits shelter you, my friend, and guide you home._

There was nothing else he could do for Talid. But ironically there wasn't anything he could do for himself either. Curled on the ground right where he had fallen, Garrus could feel the life slowly but inexorably draining out from him.

Finally he tore his eyes away from the turian. No need for him to die staring at his already dead friend and… there. Garrus concentrated to sharpen his gaze. Perhaps eighty paces away a dark figure came into view and stopped at the edge of the steep surrounding the bowl where his platoon had been ambushed. Was anyone still alive? He doubted it. The bright disc of Trebia hung behind the newcomer, making it unable for him to see more than a silhouette obscured by light. It seemed different from those insect-like aliens, even vaguely female, or maybe it was a slim male. Who could tell with such creatures for sure? The figure lifted its arms and from behind a blackness rose, a dark, swirling cloud. No. No cloud. More of those insect bots. There was a strange serenity to the scene, to all the black specks moving in perfect unison with the figures' gestures. They spun around it, spiraling higher and higher until they were set off to the west. Towards Rakasha.

_And so it will end_, Garrus thought bitterly, the steady trickle of blood slipping through his fingers. He pressed the Medigel soaked gauze harder against his chest but the bleeding would not stop. Perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps he finally would find peace in oblivion.

He closed his eyes and it was as if he could suddenly hear _her_ voice, shouting a command in a language he did not understand. Such comfort it was, even though he knew it was nothing but a trick of his dying mind. It didn't matter. There he was standing at the edge of the world of the living and imagined tasting her lips, the soft texture of her skin under his hands. He thought of the many times they had fought side by side, of all the enemies and dangers they had bested together. He remembered the day they met and the moment he realized that there was more than companionship between them; and, oh yeah, he recalled making love, and the incredible peacefulness that had overcome him while falling asleep in her arms afterwards. He was in her arms and drifting towards sleep now, wasn't he?

"See you on the other side, Shepard…" he whispered hoarsely and his world tumbled into darkness.

* * *

**AN**: Sorry if it's a bit rushed, but there's just one more chapter to go, yay! And it was never meant for anything but a shorty anyway *wink*


	5. Chapter: At the End of Twilight

**Chapter 5 ~ At the End of Twilight**

The afterlife was not at all like he expected.

For once it was full of tiny irritating nuisances. Like the wind, that howled too loud in his ears and grazed his face with tiny grains of sand. Cold and leaden limbs that refused to move. His chest was hurting like a sonovabitch and that stench… The smell of death and blood mixing with the arid scent of lifeless soil.

He clawed his eyes open and above in the violet sky, Palaven was still burning, blotches of orange and white lighting up the dawn.

So he wasn't dead. Not yet.

_Blasted Reapers. Couldn't have gotten one damn thing right, could they?_

He forced his cramped muscles to move and slowly pushed himself upright. Crusted blood was forming a dark smear on his chest, most of it soaked by the torn undershirt, yet somehow the bleeding had stopped. Mechanically he strapped the breastplate back on and scrambled to his feet, his eyes running over the perimeter. Where ever he looked he saw death. Soldiers he knew, soldiers that had fought at his side just a few hours back. A good thing this wasn't Palaven or he would have found himself by now in midst of feasting scavengers. He wasn't sure if he could have stomached the sight.

He carefully staggered over to one of the attacker's corpses. His scouts had been right. This was certainly no ordinary Reaper. With their oversized, triangular head and the multiple eyes they looked distinctively insectlike. He frowned. Could those be Collectors? He remembered dimly to have heard something about Collectors roaming through remote human colonies, but at that time he already had enough problems of his own to give it much thought. Wasn't as if it was his job to save the whole damn galaxy, right?

Regardless of all his scorn, the grain of truth was there and once uprooted it nagged on him more than he cared to admit. Once he would have… but this had been another Garrus, in another life.

Yet, when he lifted his head, he found his gaze drawn inevitably into the direction the insects had taken. It was just as true; no matter how tired he was of this war, he simply had it not in him to roll on his back and die. No. As long as he was still breathing he would fight. Till his strength faltered and the spirits welcomed him home.

But until then… A fixed idea bloomed in the back of his mind. This new creature he had seen…

With a nod to himself he saluted to the fallen, speaking a last wordless prayer for their souls.

_Seems like you're the only friend I've left, _he thought as he picked up and shouldered his empty Mantis.

Without looking back he headed north where Rakasha was maybe still fighting; the early morning sun slowly bleeding red into the sky. Each step only hardened his resolve. No room for rage. No room for fear. Nothing left but determination, grim and unconditional.

He had a Reaper to slay and, Spirits help him, no force in this universe would make him stop.

* * *

~V~

* * *

Mind floating in a blissful void, she dropped on one knee, diving below her opponents attack.

In the void there was nothing; no light, no dark. No thought. No emotion. She had forced the Collectors temporarily out of her mind and she was one. One with the moon's rocky ground below her feet. One with the dry wind that brought her strange scents. One with the shouts and booms that filtered through the silence of her thoughts. One with the blood that soaked the barren soil.

One with the knives in her hands.

In a small arc she sliced sideways, the blade piercing through the small unarmored spot on the back of the knee; severing the alien's tendons. The alien toppled, a feral snarl ripping from his chest. Instinctively she knew the male wasn't finished. Just slowed. The alien grabbed for her, its claws digging into her shoulder and she uncoiled, throwing herself into the motion, ramming the second blade through the soft underside of the chin and into the skull. Trashing wildly, the avian looking alien fell and she rolled off him, only to find herself getting knocked to the ground by a banshee's stray blast. Hissing in anger she lifted her head; suddenly face to face with the alien's fellow, the one she had downed right before. Only this one wasn't dead and with an evil grin on his bloodsmeared face he raised his gun.

She smiled back, showing him her teeth and her empty claw-tipped hand; empty because the knife was still stuck in the others head. Adrenaline was humming in her. They really did fight well, these aliens. She almost felt something like regret. But no. Regret was thought. Regret was pain. His finger twitched on the trigger; her smile deepened and in perfect harmony with the thunder of the gun her disruptive forces sprang forward; destroying the very matter in its path.

The alien hadn't even time to scream.

_Turians_, her memory suddenly offered and she groaned at the painful spike that came with the knowledge. No! She had to get away from it.

Snarling, she pushed herself up from the ground and dove for the next best target, a lone husk that scrambled over the terrain no ten feet away. The implant-peppered skin was drawn too tight over its wire-thin body that seemed to have lost even the last iota of fat. A scuttling abomination of jutting bones, tendons and flesh like dried beef. Cold dead eyes stared at her, and she grabbed for its repulsive mind. Deep in its irises a tiny flame of rage awakened and she knew she was seeing a mirror of her own. Fueled by fury the knife cleaved across the abominations chest, grazing bones and parting dead skin. Black tarry blood oozed from the wound, the foul smell of Reaper magic clogging her nostrils.

_So empty…_

The thrashing creature stilled, the deception of life finally at an end. She left the mind that had already died years ago and jumped over the husk's fallen body, hacking at the banshee blocking her way. The battle was raging in her, once more carrying away all thought and replacing it with this precious feeling; this faint sense of being alive. Left. She deflected a volley of bullets with a Barrier, sending a Shockwave after the shooter, cowering behind a rock. Warmth flooded her as she carved through another husk to reach one of those few biotics among these aliens. The female stared at her, her eyes brimming with shock and fear, yet still managing to throw a sphere of blue. It raced towards her and she laughed, catching the blast with one of her own and forcing it backwards into its caster. This was why she was here. Why Harbinger had come back. What she was finally meant to be. She just was; a force of nature, unrelenting and untouchable. The Reapers were the vanguard. But she, she was death that followed in their wake.

So she kept killing and killing; she, the bringer of destruction, yet fighting against the horrible darkness that bloomed inside threatening to devour her completely. Each death a flickering flame lighting up the dark, a tiny moment of meaning that came with sheathing her blades into an enemy, with her biotics finding a target.

Her knives ate through another hostile scout and she whirled around. A dozen bodies littered the ground. Turians. Husks. The Banshee. One of her drones. But nothing stirred. The thirst for more made her howl with fury before finally recoiling inside; an ever-hungry beast once more settling back in the dark. Prowling. Waiting.

She counted six alien sentries. Good. So none of them had managed to get away. She squinted at the horizon, dark armor glistening the cold light, blood adding a layer of wet. She extended her senses, seeking. There. Her Collectors were up north, poised and waiting. This was where this outpost had to be. She wedged the other knife free from the dead alien's head and fell into an easy jog, her mind already dismissing the previous fight and focusing itself on the battle ahead.

Maybe she would finally find a challenge there.

Maybe.

* * *

~V~

* * *

Somehow he already knew even before he saw the corpses.

It was the third sentry post he approached and just as with the others, death had beaten him once again. He crouched and dipped his gloved finger into the blue puddle dripping from a scouts slit jaw. The blood was still wet. No more than half an hour behind.

Ignoring his aching body, he straightened, imagining seeing movement ahead. He followed. The days were short on Menae and it was already noon; Rakasha still another four hours away.

He would catch them there by nightfall.

* * *

~V~

* * *

_Wishing is a bitch,_ she though grimly, while watching from her vantage point how Collectors and Husks broke against the fortifications of the camp like a nightmarish tide. Absently, she tossed and flipped her knife, catching it with the blade. Then with the hilt. Blade and hilt.

So the outpost _was_ indeed a challenge and she itched to be with the drones; to run down the steep slopes of the hill until she could taste the blood in the air with her own tongue. But she was trapped up here by the same challenge, by the need of coordinating their attacks so their ranks would finally crumble under the assault.

In the distance she heard the low droning hum of a Reaper unleashing its primary attack. Maybe if Harbinger would have been here… But no, he had just dropped her off on this godforsaken moon and left to "deactivate the Catalyst once and for all". Apparently someone called Nazara wasn't able to claim ownership any longer. She shook her head send the few Seekers she had left against the aliens manning the barricades before they could release another EMP. What did she care about strife between Reapers, anyway? It was good that Harbinger was gone. She wasn't sure if she could stand the presence of other sentient beings any longer. Months of loneliness had finally burned away the need for company. She went through the furnace and what was left behind was a hard numbed core.

Twilight had fallen, shadows stretching and slowly claiming the outpost below. She tilted her head. Something… she _felt_ something. Just the tiniest shift in the air; a prickling between her shoulder blades. The knife landed in her palm and she swirled around driving its blade into the shape that had risen behind her. She heard a grunt of pain and then a punch like a sledgehammer hit her left elbow, almost breaking the joint. The bloodied knife was knocked from her hand. Her arm flared with pain. A biotic blast erupted from her, but she missed, her sight blurred by tears.

The attacker dive-rolled to the left and she jumped his back, pushing him down to the ground, second knife flashing. He twisted away and the blade slipped on the edge of his armor, barely grazing his neck and furrowing the dry earth instead. The hilt slipped from her fingers as the turian heaved and scrambled upright, trying to shake her off. She wrapped her good arm around his throat to choke him from behind. Claws were digging in her face, into her back and then she was yanked over the attacker's shoulder and went airborne. She cushioned the fall with a force field but the turian was already coming at her again, boosted by a ferocity that utterly belied the wound in his side. His fist came for her solar plexus. She blocked the blow, and for a moment they went through a frightening familiar pattern of attack and counterattack, punches and blocks. She howled a wordless battle cry and pulled her biotics towards her. This time he wouldn't… He propelled forward, slamming into her with full force; hurling them over the edge.

It was only then that she remembered that she still had her gun.

* * *

~V~

* * *

Stones jabbed hard into his back as they bounced down the slope.

Maybe this hadn't been such a smart move after all. He tried to curl into a ball but the gash in his side was hurting too much; a deep, grating agony somewhere in his lung. So he simply hung on, clawing and slashing at the strange Reaper creature with his own knife, as if the survival of the outpost depended on it. And maybe it did. This one was certainly a damn lot more dangerous than those he had encountered before.

Their descent stopped with a final bounce that knocked the air out of him and made black stars dance in his vision. A cracked rib or two. The wound in his chest had broken open once more. Wet soaking his shirt. The handle of his combat knife slippery with more blood. Each breath like razorblades scraping the insides of his lungs. He struggled to get up. Pain, hot and livid pinned him to the ground; as surely as the weight sitting on his torso. He never wanted to die lying on his back. What irony.

Some 200 paces ahead he could hear the fighting. Could hear his people breaking under the relentless assault of creatures unable to feel a thing. 200 paces. Just as well it could have been millions.

Still, he wasn't dead. Yet.

One last move left. One last chance. He lashed out.

The cold steel of the creature's gun pressed against his forehead the moment the tip of his blade touched its throat. He followed the barrel upward.

And for the first time, he met her gaze.

* * *

~V~

* * *

His eyes were blue.

Her hand clenched; the gun's handle hard and strange in her grip, and then again as familiar as shaking hands with an old friend.

Somewhere ahead Collector's surged against the barricades; dozens of tiny hooks tugging at her mind. She ignored them. The gunfire, the battlefield; everything drowned in a deafening roar; the urge to kill, to push the trigger, screaming at her with a million voices. But something was wrong and odd feeling of significance iced over her. A déjà-vu, only it was so much more, so much stronger.

Blue.

She saw it despite the failing light, despite the life slowly and painfully seeping out her body from too many cuts; the twin glaciers fastening on her and sucking her into the darkest abyss of her mind. Acid burned in her throat; constricting her chest.

"Spirits…" the turian whispered, face a mask of shock, but his voice… So low and full of tiny disharmonies; the sound of it slicing so deeply, it ruptured the very core of her heart.

And then. "Shepard…"

Her finger on the trigger shock; no, her whole body trembled and with it a tiny memory sparked.

_Shepard. Still trying to make me blush?_

She screamed and the world shattered.

* * *

~V~

* * *

His hand holding the knife spasmed.

His heart was hammering in his chest, dominating for a moment even the pain in his lungs. Walls closed in and collapsed. And yet those huge, pitch black eyes, so cold and unforgiving in their alieness, kept staring down at him from a pale haggard face that had lost even the last iota of softness. He still recognized. But it _could_ not be… He had lost her; had seen her being ripped away and swallowed by space. He knew it meant he was dying. She was a hallucination, a last devious attempt of his mind to torture him with his worst nightmares and highest hopes.

He lowered the knife, painfully aware of the barrel against his forehead.

Angel of Death; coming for him, taking his life. So be it.

And yet… Those empty eyes... Too horribly empty to be coming from his imagination.

"Shepard…" he said, a last goodbye, a last time pretending.

And the creature wearing her face screamed; screamed and hunched over, the gun slipping from her hand. Fingers, he first now registered, tipped with claws, digging at her temples. Blood welled; deep crimson drops falling and suddenly it washed over him, _Spirits help me_, it was real.

His eyes jerked from her deformed hands back to her face, to the pale-purplish tint of her skin; to the black implant studded veins creeping up her neck and cupping her head. What had they done?

A storm unleashed in him; a hate raging with the intensity of a thousand suns. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. All he could do was staring at the twisted shadow of the woman he once knew; at the woman he once loved, turned and corrupted by the Reaper's tainting touch.

All those years he believed her dead… How long had she endured? Had she resisted in the hope that someone would be out there looking for her; had waited for the help that never came? Nausea stirred. The worst was that he knew. From the deepest corner of his spirit-forsaken soul he knew that somehow he _could_ have saved her.

Hand shaking, he reached out, tilting up her chin. He had to _see_.

A shiver went through her and she lifted her gaze, and there, deep inside the blackness something stirred. A fleck of green rolled over her irises and a tear formed at the corner of her eye, sliding its way down her cheek. She stretched out a slim boney hand towards his face, then halted midway.

"Is it… you?"

Just a whisper. Her voice too hoarse, almost a growl. Yet unmistakably Shepard's, and the guilt was killing him.

"Yeah."

Without warning, she dropped forward, face sliding against the hollow of his neck; her body molding against his, as it had so many times before. It was her and it was not; her scent buried so completely by the smell of old blood, ozone and death.

She made a tiny noise and he realized it was a sob; the sound cutting straight into his miserable soul. All the years, the loss, the dread and the horrible desperation; it all spilled out through the wound that had never really healed and he wrapped his arms around her; holding on, pulling her ever closer. His side was screaming with pain, mirroring the anguish he felt inside for the things this war had made them become.

And yet when he felt her cold hands on his face, her lips brushing against his skin and seeking the warmth only another body could give, it all stopped mattering.

Because this time he would make good on his promise to stay until the very end.

* * *

~V~

* * *

Nightfall.

He had insisted and so they had hauled their broken bodies back towards the slope and there he sat, leaning against a rock. She had crawled onto his lap and now watched his face, her palms touching the sides of his head. So calm. So unafraid. Shadows embracing the light, hiding his features.

It didn't matter.

She knew.

She could feel.

Stripped of their armor; the fleeing warmth of his body seeping into hers. Fatal; they both had known from the moment her knife sliced into him and ruptured his lung.

And yet… His arms folded around her. Sheltering. Forgiving. He would not let go. Life leaking out from her; the imbalance of nature striving to righten itself. Too long. Too long had she been trapped on the fringe; her mind, body and soul longing to be whole once more.

She relaxed, her head dropping and resting against his neck. Peace rolled over her. Pain grew distant. He would not let go.

End of twilight, and she was dying.

Again.

She remembered now.

Memories, like pearls on a string they were; all connected, each tugging free another; tiny threads unraveling the veil that had shrouded her memory.

She remembered it all; the Normandy, New York. N7. The Alliance.

And she remembered Kaiden. Guilt hammered at her and in the distance she sensed the Collectors still attacking the outpost but she was too weakened to make them stop. She heard the Reapers kill; and silent tears fell from her eyes, tiny hot remembrances for all that was lost.

The whole world was lost and she wanted to weep.

His grip tightened around her.

"We will meet again," he whispered against her bloodied temple, his words holding such a deep conviction, she felt his love more keenly than any other oath could have ever imparted. It surged her even to the remotest corners, soothing; healing her from within; leaving behind pieces of his soul.

And inside, a vast black ocean opened up before her; with her standing the shoreline, waves playing and tugging at her legs, still feeling his arms and love surrounding her.

He would not let go. Neither would she.

And just like that she perfectly knew that one day she would find him again.

Maybe in another age.

Maybe in another world.

But she would.

And for the first in a very long time there was nothing but peace.

**.~'*'~.**

I look in your eyes in the end of the time.  
Cold tears fall down like the angel's cry.  
Shall the night become our everdream where the shadows embrace the light.

_Dark the suns - Don't Fear The Sleep_

* * *

**~Epilogue: A spark ignited~**

In a solar system that was called Local Cluster by those misbegotten organics, Harbinger felt a tendril of its awareness snap. It even made it pause for a moment, allowing one of those pitiful starships to land a hit before destroying the vessel.

So the Shepard-husk was no more.

If the Reaper would have been capable of any emotions at all it would have felt something like regret.

Indoctrination had always been Nazara's ploy, and Nazara had been the first who discovered how powerful an instrument the organics were, and once the proper mechanics were set it was nothing to turn them against their own. But the husks, they had always been Harbinger's, and for a time the Reaper had thought to have devised a method to deploy a different kind of husk. Not a dead entity in an animated shell but a pliable aware mind caught on the very verge of death, the spark of intelligence still burning and yet eternally torn between the need to live and die the same.

This cycle was almost over, but with the next… With an army of those enhanced husks the Harvest would have reached a deadly precise efficiency.

But the Shepard-husk had been unique; a perfect combination of coincidence and personal experiences that had imprinted themselves on this organic units' mind. Each attempt to duplicate had failed. Of course the Reaper had neither sense nor concept of pride and yet it experienced an unusual energy drain when analyzing this particular failure. In a strange way it had come to appreciate the Shepard-husk's presence and some of its routines were now less efficient for her absence.

And with that, the Reaper called Harbinger decided that it positively hated failures.

~.

**AN:** Yay, finally a story completed. Nothing too spectacular, I know, but I still hope you enjoyed it a bit. Thx for bearing with me *gg*


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